


Together(?)

by CelesteFitzgerald



Series: Happy birthday, SevenCandleSticks! [1]
Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 03:58:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15788493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelesteFitzgerald/pseuds/CelesteFitzgerald
Summary: Since she was a child, Jihyo has been fascinated with outer space and aliens, so she and her friends Mina and Jeongyeon promise to go space together one day. As they grow up, Jihyo's love of space only continues to grow, and she does everything she can to make her dreams a reality. Her friends, however, begin to lose faith. But that's okay, Jihyo knows that one day, the three of them will still discover aliens together....Right?





	Together(?)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SevenCandlesticks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenCandlesticks/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Matoki Signal](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377337) by [SevenCandlesticks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenCandlesticks/pseuds/SevenCandlesticks). 



> This story is a prequel to Matoki Signal by SevenCandleSticks, but it should still make sense as a stand-alone story.

“Woah!” Jeongyeon said, her eyes wide as she flipped to the next page, with Mina peering over her shoulder.

“Isn’t it amazing?” Jihyo squealed as she watched her two best friends crowding around her book. After two weeks of begging, her mom had finally relented and taken her shopping for a copy of _Close Encounters: Signals from the Beyond_. Ever since she saw a television special a few months ago, Jihyo was eager to learn as much about aliens as she possibly could—even if it meant struggling through a book full of technical words she couldn’t yet understand. And besides, the book had enough cool photographs of UFOs to make up for it.

“You really think there are aliens in there?” Mina asked, pointing to one of the photos in question.

“Yeah! And who knows how far they’ve come from, or what they look like. For all we know they could be bright blue, with big scary eyes,” Jihyo joked, making O’s around her eyes with her fingers.

Mina laughed. “Are there pictures of the aliens, too?” she asked, yanking the book out of Jeongyeon’s hands.

Jihyo sighed. “No, only fake ones. No one’s been able to get a real picture of them yet.” She then smiled, confidently pointing to her chest. “But I’m gonna be the first to do it!”

“No way,” Jeongyeon said, grabbing the book back from Mina. “Not if I beat you to it!”

“Let’s do it together!” Mina chimed in, bouncing with excitement.

Jihyo’s eyes slowly widened as a huge smile spread across her face. “Yeah! Together!” She pulled her friends into a hug. She just knew the three of them were going to be the best space explorers ever.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mina took another bite of the lunch Jihyo’s mom had made them, listening intently while Jihyo talked about another article she had read. The details were a bit difficult to understand—Jihyo was the expert on this, not Mina—but from what she could understand, this new spacecraft was equipped with the technology to travel further than any other before it. It was extremely cool, but even if Mina _hadn’t_ found it interesting, the passion with which Jihyo spoke of it would make anyone want to learn more.

“…I can’t wait until we go to space together to see all of this for ourselves,” Jihyo finished, and Mina nodded fervently.

“But,” Jeongyeon began quietly, “do you really think we’ll be able to?” After she caught sight of the shocked looks Jihyo and Mina gave her, she quickly added, “I just mean it’ll be really hard.”

“So? We’ve been planning this for years,” Jihyo said.

Mina laughed. “No, _you’ve_ been planning this for years. Whenever I try to help, you tell me that my ideas will never work.”

“Yeah, because they won’t,” Jihyo teased, sticking out her tongue. She turned back to Jeongyeon. “You’re right. It’ll be hard. But I believe that we can do it. People have already done way harder things, there’s no reason we _can’t_ find aliens.”

After a few seconds, Jeongyeon sighed. “If anyone can do it, you can.”

Jihyo smiled back at her. “Oh!” Her eyes lit up and she jumped out of her chair. “I forgot to tell you—I got a new poster!”

Before Mina could even respond, Jihyo was already on the way to her room. Mina and Jeongyeon shared a smile before following her.

Mina had been to Jihyo’s room countless times over the past couple of years, but the sheer number of posters and diagrams covered with Jihyo’s notes never ceased to amaze her. There were charts of constellations, reprints of rocket blueprints, and—this must be the new addition—a map of nearby galaxies.

“…and scientists can use the color and luminosity of the stars to figure out what they’re made of and how hot they are, so they can make predictions on which ones could be capable of sustaining life on the planets in their solar system,” Jihyo said as she looked among the many post-it notes that were already covering her new poster.

“How do you know all this?” Mina muttered to herself, in awe of how much time Jihyo spent studying outside of school.

“But I thought you decided that all that alien stuff was made up?” Jeongyeon said cautiously.

“No, no, not _all_ of it,” Jihyo said. She walked over to her bookshelf to grab her copy of _Close Encounters_. Taking care not to further damage the worn-out pages, she flipped through the book. “All these pictures of UFOs are fake, but that doesn’t mean that aliens don’t exist somewhere—how could they _not_ exist, with all these galaxies surrounding us—we just haven’t found them yet.”

“And we’re _going_ to find them,” Mina reassured Jihyo, smiling at the memory of the promise the three of them had made on the day Jihyo first showed them the book. Jihyo had wanted this for so long; she had spent countless hours researching outer space. Mina couldn’t stand the thought of all of Jihyo’s work being for nothing.

Jihyo smiled and nodded at her. “Yeah, we will.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“This better be good,” Jeongyeon muttered to Mina as they waited at the coffee shop. Jeongyeon didn’t know why Jihyo had invited them there so late at night. Jihyo’s behavior had been really strange lately. She took forever to respond to texts, kept cancelling plans, and when she _did_ find the time to hang out with them she was always distracted. Hopefully they’d finally find out what was going on; Jeongyeon was beginning to be seriously concerned.

“Let’s just be happy she wants to see us again,” Mina said, concern showing in her face as well.

After a few more moments of silence, Jihyo burst through the doors, completely out of breath. Then she rushed straight past Jeongyeon and Mina’s table to the counter without stopping to say hello. Apparently she really needed her coffee.

Once Jihyo sat down with her coffee, Jeongyeon and Mina stared and waited.

“Thank you so much for meeting me here on such short notice, I really needed some caffeine right now,” Jihyo said, seemingly oblivious to the slight bit of tension in the room.

“So…we came all the way here just to watch you drink your coffee?” Mina laughed.

“No, I just needed this for what I’m about to show you. It’s gonna be a long night.”

Jeongyeon narrowed her eyes slightly. _A long night?_ What was Jihyo getting them into?

Jihyo continued. “I know I’ve been acting weird lately, but I’ve been working on a surprise. And I finally have it ready! I can’t wait to show you two.” Jihyo’s smile stretched ear to ear, and she could barely sit still in her seat.

“Well? What is it?” Mina asked.

Impossibly, Jihyo’s smile grew even more. “Project TWICE!”

“Project TWICE?” Jeongyeon echoed.

“I finally did it. I created a program on my laptop to help me send signals to aliens!”

Jihyo’s words were met with silence. Then—

“You mean you actually did it?” Mina asked.

Jeongyeon looked over at Mina in shock. She wasn’t serious, was she? There was no way Mina was actually encouraging this. Jeongyeon thought they had grown out of this. Yeah, it was fun when the three of them used to make plans to travel to space and meet aliens or whatever—but that was _years_ ago. Jihyo didn’t…she couldn’t actually believe she’d be able to do this all on her own, could she?

“…so it’ll probably take a very long time to actually make contact with aliens since they could be _anywhere_ , but if we work at it long enough and send out a signal to enough places, I know we can find someone eventually!” Jihyo finally finished talking and waited for her friends to respond.

Mina spoke up quietly. “I can’t believe you actually did it. I mean…that’s…wow. You really think it’ll work?”

“Of course! I’m sure I’ll have to make some modifications along the way, but I know I can do it.”

Then Jihyo turned to Jeongyeon, a smile still on her face. Jeongyeon gulped. She didn’t want to be the one to destroy Jihyo’s dreams. But she was being so unrealistic, and she'd only end up devastated in the end when this "Project TWICE" thing ultimately failed. Willing herself to do something, _anything_ in response, Jeongyeon forced a smile.

Jihyo must have found it acceptable, because she turned back to face both of them at once. “If you’re ready to go, we can head over to my place and send out the first signals tonight!”

 _Tonight?_ There was no way Jeongyeon could keep up the façade of being supportive of this all night. This was too much.

Before she realized what she was doing, Jeongyeon abruptly stood up. “Sorry. I can’t tonight.”

“Jeongyeon? I thought you said you had free time tonight,” Jihyo said.

Jeongyeon avoided meeting Jihyo’s eyes; she knew she’d find hurt there. “I have to—I just—I have a thing.” She grabbed her coat and started rushing toward the door.

“But…I’ve been so excited to show you, we’ve been talking about this for so long.”

Jeongyeon stopped walking and bit her lip. She used to want this too. She still had those memories of the three of them gushing over that book all those years ago. But that’s all they were: memories.

Jihyo stood up and walked toward her, close enough that Jeongyeon couldn’t avoid looking at her anymore. “We were supposed to do this together.”

Looking down at her feet, Jeongyeon finished walking toward the door. “I know,” she whispered.

She opened the door and left.


End file.
